Oprah Winfrey tops Forbes' 2013 List of the Most Powerful Celebrities

posted by Dorothy Pomerantz | Yahoo! omg!
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3 years ago

Despite business stumbles and an $88 million earnings drop since last year, Oprah Winfrey returns to the top of Forbes's annual Celebrity 100 ranking of the most powerful celebrities after two years of coming in second place. She leads a female-dominated top 10, where six of the 10 spots are occupied by women, including Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Madonna, Taylor Swift, and Ellen DeGeneres.

Four are are pop stars. While women trail men financially in many sectors, they can earn as much as (if not more than) men in music thanks to the great equalizer — touring. Stars make the vast majority of their money on tour and fans of both sexes are more than happy to pay up for the expensive tickets. Compare that to the movie industry, where women are often relegated to the girlfriend role (which almost always pays less) or lower-budget films, which have to make serious profits to return significant money to the stars.

Even without her eponymous daytime talk show, Winfrey made an estimated $77 million between June 2012 and June 2013, down from last year's $165 million. While she wasn't the highest earner on our list, her money, mixed with strong fame scores in metrics like press mentions and social networking power, pushed her to the top.

Winfrey remains a powerful force in Hollywood. Her Oprah Winfrey Network, once a drifting cable outpost that lost an estimated $330 million for parent company Discovery between 2008 and the end of 2012, is now a smooth(-ish)-running media machine that could turn a profit by the end of 2013.